There will eventually be DVD players that will decode captions, but this may take years. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act will require that change.
We found this out the hard way
when we bought a new DVD/VHS combo player about a year and a half ago. We have many VHS tapes and DVDs of our own, plus we get them from our library. There are a lot of DVDs out there that have the CC embedded signal as well as the menu driven subtitles choices. And
sometimes the menu drive subtitles do
NOT have English as a choice, only foreign languages like Spanish or French, etc.). So sometimes DVDs have only the CC for English captioning. :roll: Well, we found our VHS tapes w/ CC that worked fine with the old player, weren't displaying the CC as well as some of our DVDs or ones from the library or even Netflix, that had only CC and no English subtitles through the DVD menu.
We called the manufacturer because we could find nothing in manual for the machine to get the CC to display on the TV (TV controls for CC are always on). Finally talked to a manufacturer tech and was told "oh, no, it's an HD machine. The HD technology blocks the CC signal."
So we promptly took that piece of junk back to Sears, LOL! And got our $$$ back! :P The salesman looked it up and said, yes, that's true. And found us a dual player that was about $200 cheaper than the one we had originally purchased
which was *not* HD and so did not block the CCs. Apparently if we'd ask the right questions when buying the original player, the sales people do have access to look that kind of stuff up. We didn't think to ask, you know? We just assumed since the old player sent to the signal to the TV, the new one would, too. So, we do without HD but we get our captions.
Nice to know they will have laws about these players as they now do about the TVs having to have the CC decoders to be sold in the U.S.
Even though we have to wait for the players to be regulated, still. :roll: